Sea stories connect former crew of first nuclear-powered carrier

BILLINGS, Mont. — Chas Folcik had just turned 19 in the fall of
1962 when he found himself on the deck of the first nuclear-powered
aircraft carrier in the world, the legendry USS Enterprise

Attached to a radar squadron, Folcik was standing guard of an
A-4 Skyhawk, loaded with a nuclear bomb to be dropped on Cuba if
President John F. Kennedy gave the orders during the missile crisis
with the Soviet Union.

With a bit of understatement, he remembers being "scared."

Mike White remembers his most interesting time as a crew member
of the Enterprise as having drawn Shore Patrol duty at Subic Bay in
the Philippines. He was about 24, he said, when he got caught in
the middle of a Filipino gang war.

"They had guns," he said. "The local (rivals) offered me a gun
if I would retaliate."

Jim Kadinger was aboard the Enterprise as part of the ship's
company during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He said he was not
that concerned that there might be a nuclear exchange between the
United States and the Soviet Union.

Twenty six years old at the time, he admitted to the
possibility, but never gave it much thought.

The three men are in Billings this week as the USS Enterprise
Association has its annual gathering, this year under the Big Sky.
The old sailors swap sea stories and renew old friendships at a
different port of call each year. Last year they gathered in Irving
Texas; next year is a sea cruise to the Bahamas during the
hurricane season.

That produced another sea story about the Enterprise riding out
a typhoon in the South China Sea in 1971.

Association historian William Slupe recalls the pitch and roll
quite well while headed directly into the storm.

The USS Enterprise CV-65, the eighth U.S. warship to carry that
name, was commissioned in November 1961. It is driven by eight
nuclear reactors. Still part of the country's arsenal, the ship is
home-ported at Norfolk, Va.

It has played a significant role in the country's military
history since its commissioning, the first being the Cuban Missile
Crisis in October 1962 when Kennedy instituted a navel blockage
around Cuba where the Soviets had placed intercontinental ballistic
missiles capable of hitting all the major cities on the U.S.
Eastern Seaboard. The standoff brought the Russia and United States
to the brink of a nuclear exchange.

A few years ago, a joint symposium between Russian and American
officials, when comparing notes, revealed the nuclear war was
closer than either side realized at the time. Eventually the
missiles were removed from Cuba, but the U.S. embargo of Cuba
continues to this day.

The association has 800 members, Slupe said, but he estimates
more than 100,000 sailors have served on the carrier. It is due for
decommissioning in 2013.

"It was among the first to prove the effectiveness of
nuclear-powered ships," he said.

In 1964, during Operation Sea Orbit, three U.S. warships - the
cruiser USS Long Beach, destroyer USS Bainbridge and the
Enterprise, all powered by the atom - circumnavigated the globe
without refueling.